Much time has been wasted in answering, or not really answering, the antisemitism inherent in the Goldstone report on the Gaza War.

We on 4international have seen this Goldstone Report as linked to the Iranian Nuclear Bomb and direct attacks against the existence of Israel, also denial of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews.

The aim is to create a massive hatred of Israel, to put Israel so much on the defensive psychologically that it takes its eye off the ball, the main issue, which is the need to destroy the Iranian Nuclear Bomb, a bomb which is directly aimed at Israel, and however delivered would cause loss of Jewish life in the millions. iranian leaders have already said that to destroy Israel would require just one bomb to get through.

This is the analysis by DEBKAfile

[Begin DEBKAfile analsis here]

The Netanyahu government’s slow-moving, lackadaisical handling of the Goldstone commission mandated for accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza, played into the hands of a coalition formed to strip the Israeli military of legitimacy as a defensive strike force against Iran’s fast-moving nuclear weapons program and its Middle East allies’ missile arsenals. Those missiles are poised to strike Israel’s population centers if Iran is attacked.

Israel had – and still has – plenty of moral, diplomatic and strategic tools for defending itself. They were not applied and so this hostile coalition was allowed to strike Israel on three fronts in the last fortnight: Turkish prime minister Tayyep Recip Erdogan’s unleashed an unbridled assault on the Jewish state; Muslim riots suddenly flared on Temple Mount; and the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas changed his mind and pushed for a special UN Human Rights Commission session Friday, Oct. 16, to endorse the Goldstone report, after first accepting its postponement to March.

This sequence of events came together inexorably in Geneva where a predictable majority of the UNHRC voted to refer Israel’s alleged war crimes to the UN Security Council, while omitting to mention Hamas’ culpability.

The motivation behind this run of events was verified by its sequel:

Saturday, Muslim and Arab media, notably London-based news organizations, “predicted” that Israel would react to its “growing diplomatic isolation” with a “crazy military adventure” that would inflame the entire Middle East.

Al the region’s ills past and present were thus laid at Israel’s door and its military discredited from that day on.

The British prime minister Gordon Brown and French president Nicolas Sarkozy played along with this trend, first by staying out of the vote and second by then writing a letter to the Israeli prime minister, which smoothly confirmed Israel’s right to defend itself – calling it “an emotive issue” – without explaining why they failed to raise a finger against a UN motion denying this right.

In their letter, Brown and Sarkozy, who call themselves friends of Israel, expressed the hope that the international airing of the Gaza report would help promote peace negotiations because peace was the best safeguard for Israel’s security. Thus, with typical European hypocrisy, the two leaders committed themselves to helping the hate-Israel ball to continue rolling through international bodies which everyone knows are permanently loaded against the Jewish state by a majority of human-rights violators and tyrants.

Israel’s “emotiveness” was first invoked 39 years ago when Leila Khaled of the Palestinian Popular Liberation Front tried to hijack an El Al flight on Sept. 6, 1970, en route from Amsterdam to New York. Her accomplice was Patrick Arguella of Nicaragua, member of the Carlos international terrorist group, then backed by Russian intelligence.

The Israeli crew overpowered the two terrorists and the flight landed safely in London carrying Arguella’s body, Khaled tied up and a planeload of relieved passengers.

Then too the Foreign Office found the pilot over-emotional. And 24 hours later, the British authorities coolly released the Palestinian terrorist without charge although she had been armed with two grenades ready to detonate in midair. That free British pass for a terrorist endangers international aviation up to the present day. Nothing else appears to have changed in London.

Yet the Israeli prime minister continued to believe that calling European leaders in person and a charm campaign among them would be enough to reduce the fallout from the Goldstone report.

After the event – and much too late – Netanyahu’s office issued a determined statement Saturday: “We shall delegitimize all those who attack the legitimacy of our military. We’ll be every place where anti-Israel and anti-Semite forces are active.”

He vowed to mobilize all Israel’s best resources for building a task team to combat the fallout from the UNHRC resolution and put its recommendations before a special cabinet meeting – a process that will consume several more wasted weeks.

So how will this change the attitudes of the British and French leaders and line Europe up against the anti-Israel resolution?

And how will the Israeli government protect its top officials and generals from prosecution in the countries who voted for it or abstained?

Those are good questions given the Netanyahu government’s tame reaction to the crisis in Turkey’s relations with Israel: “Not everyone in Turkey is like Erdogan” or “Relations must be restored to their normal track without delay.”

They are dreaming. Erdogan’s violent anti-Israel and borderline anti-Semitic attitude is no passing phase. Israel must reconcile itself to the loss of this valuable ally and forget the friendly ties between the two air forces because the Islamic party ruling Turkey has gone fishing in extremist waters.

Netanyahu must also stop calling on the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to sit down and discuss peace without preconditions. Abbas has lost the Gaza Strip and the support of half of his people. To win them back, he has embarked on a rejectionist course in competition with the extremist Islamic Hamas. Two of the most dangerous powder kegs simmering in the Middle East today are not located in Washington or Paris but in Ramallah, 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip 78 kilometers to the south.

Israel has a boxful of powerful tools for dealing with the two Palestinian governments.

If sanctions are legitimate penalties for Iran, why not economic sanctions against the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah for setting the Human Rights Council loose against Israel and its military?

Why should Israeli soldiers, called “war criminals by Palestinians and copycat Israel Arabs, grant special passes for Palestinian VIPs to exit the West Bank at night and go partying in Israeli towns?

Why does the Netanyahu government continue to release INS 220 million (app. $50 million) every month to the Gaza Strip knowing that the Hamas uses the money to rebuild the smuggling tunnels Israel destroyed in its Cast Lead operation in January?

By charging customs duty on all smuggled goods funneled into Gaza through the tunnels, the Hamas regime has turned the them into a going concern with the help of revenue from Israel. The same income also funds its military operations.

After Israel dismantled more than 100 West Bank roadblocks as requested by the Obama administration, the Palestinians proceeded to turn the Goldstone Report and the UN Human Rights Council into one large roadblock for Israeli travelers abroad. At the very least, put the roadblocks back.

But most all, the government headed by Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Avigdor Lieberman is painfully slow-moving and cumbersome in the diplomatic-strategic arena.

The Goldstone report did not pop up this Friday. The panel started work on April 3, 2009 under a predetermined UNHRC mandate targeting Israel. The government had seven months at the very least prepare a counter-report documenting 10 years of murderous Palestinian campaigns specifically targeting Israeli civilians, women and children, and their consistent violation of every rule and standard of armed conflict and human rights.

This document should have been prepared in good time and handed in to the international court at The Hague with a list of the guilty Palestinian officials, some still in responsible positions with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

The Palestinian delegate would then not have dared remark brazenly Saturday: “Anybody who kills children for no reason, or civilians should be prosecuted.”

One reason why the Middle East suddenly finds itself on a hazardous course today harks back to one of Barack Obama’s first acts as US president, which was to reach out to the Muslim world, including the Palestinians, in his June 4 speech at Cairo University. His conciliatory words planted high hopes in their minds that he was on their side and willing to squeeze Israel for gains which had eluded them in years of terror and military belligerence.

They misread his intentions: Obama sought to achieve peace for Israel with its Arab neighbors and the Palestinians, a tough call which all his predecessors in the White House had missed attaining, while the Arabs hoped to use Obama’s goodwill to neutralize Israel’s powerful military strength.

Feeling cheated of this hope, they proceeded to enlist the world, so far successfully, for disarming the IDF by having it discredited and criminalized.

The Palestinian-led campaign has nearly closed Israel’s window of opportunity for striking Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities; Netanyahu and his advisers were too slow off the mark. He will have to move fast and hit hard to turn the negative tide back.

Although he disguised it Obama the President of the US is also an active Holocaust Denier. Of course he cannot say so directly but he does say it indirectly.

In his Cairo Speech referred to above Obama made a reference to the reality of the Holocaust. Fair enough you might say. But then he went on to make a comparision between the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and the Palestinian Refugee issue.

That in fact is Holocaust Denial right there. Obama was saying that relatively speaking the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews was followed by the expulsion of the Arabs from their Homeland in 1948.

It is based on a lie. The Arabs who lived in Palestine, and many had only been living in Palestine for a very short time, having entered from neighbouring Arab areas attracted by the jobs and wealth created by Jewish initiative, itself based on the Zionist love for the land, had refused the offer of a state following the 1947 UN proposals, and had went to war in order to block the creation of the Jewish state.

This brings in the issue of Islam. It is the programme of Islam that it is impossible to have a Jewish, Christian or other state on their land, that is the land of Islam.

Who actually is Obama? This even now is very uncertain.

We know that he was born a Muslim, was educated in a Muslim school in Indonesia, while in that school in his most formative years worshipped as a Muslim.

That whole issue is very uncertain and indeterminate. But then Obama and his wife chose a Black and Israel Hating Church of a Chigago Christian sect in order to both worship and pursue their political careers, this was the Church which was run by Pastor Wright.

In this Israel hating environment Obama sat for fully 20 years.

Of course they rarely heard from Wright “We hate Jews” but they did all the time hear and support “We hate Israel”.

THAT IS THE PRESIDENT OF TODAY´S UNITED STATES!

This of course is the content of the phenomenon of “Palestinianism”, a kind of religion and sociological category in its own right. It is an entity that tends to draw the curtains down on any kind of investigation of the Arabs in the Middle East and especially in Palestine. This has the big and for them the essential effect in hiding the close connection between Islam and Hitler, and of course in the Holocaust.

So when Obama belittled the Holocaust in Cairo he was actually on a roll, and was part of a continuum which existed from the age old opposition of Islam to Christians and to Jews living in their midst.

The proof of this is in the existence of so many Jew Free states in the Arab world. And indeed very few Christians also!

Christians are being driven out of every Arab country. There is hardly a word about this from the Vatican especially.

Judaism is a different kind of ideology entirely. The religion of Judaism is different to Christianity, and of course Islam, because as a religion it gets its motive force from being at the centre of a nation, and a national liberation movement, in the most definite sense.

Islam hates the Jews because it seeks world domination behind an anti nation fog of lies and terror.

But the New World Order of Bush and now Obama et al also hate the Jews in this respect also. The Jews fought to exist over 2000 years of persecution in the Diaspora. It is this essentially which lies behind the Jews of Israel today and their bitter hatred for the present American Government.

In this sense Jews represent all of us. That is all of us who hate world governmental dictatorship and who still see value in being Welsh, Irish etc.

The Irish ran up against a plank of this New World Dictatorship when the EU annulled their vote against the EU and made them vote again in the midst of a terrifying world capitalist (banking) crisis.

The forces of Judaism today though are unable to fight this new Fascist threat. it is not accidental that one of their own tribe, Goldstone, has emerged to point a dagger at the very existence of the Jewish people. Goldstone is indeed a Jew and he thinks he is right. This is throwing the Jewish people into enormous crisis and Jews cannot take a step forward without a sharp critique of Judaism itself. Is Judaism an ideology which can defend the Jews in this period of sharp turns and speeding capitalist crisis. Obviously not.

Leon Trotsky warned about the Nazi Holocaust, and before his murder he urged that Jews escape from Europe and that they set up their state and insisted that Jews defended that state.

It is necessary to turn to Trotskyism, and to learn lessons from the principles of this great man, and I suggest that Israel must learn from the method of Trotsky in creating the Red Army.

We ask our readers to think on this and ask what this might mean for Israel and its supporters today. We will of course return to this. Thank our readers for writing in, especially those who wrote “private” above their letter. We will keep it private and we will keep in touch with you.

His government may not be able to avoid establishing a credible panel of inquiry to rebut Goldstone’s allegations for the sake of an US veto at the UN Security Council against the report’s referral to the international war crimes tribunal. It could have been set up quietly without outside pressure months ago and validated the exhaustive probes carried out by the IDF of every single complaint arising from the Gaza offensive.

The appearance fo a British National Party leader on Question Time is a real tester. The dogmatists on the so called Left are condemning the BNP.

Yet the BNP is the only party I know of which supported the right of Israel to defend its country against Islam and Hamas in the war at the turn of the year!

I posted the following in a comment on Israp’undit:

[begin comment on Israpundit here]

There is another issue which is the nation state.

Judaism gets its progressive character because it is an expression of Jewish nationalism, the nation state and the Jewish Homeland, in secular as well as religious terms Zion.

That is the issue. THE KEY ISSUE.

And that is why the BNP was alone in Britain in giving support to the right of Israel to wage a war just some months ago to defend its nation state against Hamas.

The BNP emphasis on the English nation and nation state finds itself in the same camp, despite other contradictory things.

Trotsky made distinctions in his writings. For example he saw Rivera in Spain as an aristocrat, not a Fascist, (Many were getting this wrong, especially dogmatists were) because Rivera did not have a plebeian mass base, the central component of Fascism.

In Germany and Italy it was different. Mussolini did have a mass base and both he and Hitler used socialist demagogy in great amounts in their propaganda.

Islam on the other hand is a Fascist movement and ideology.

So are those in Britain who opposed Israel and its right to defend its citizens in the Gaza war. Those atacking the BNP on Question Time are actually closer to Fascism and to a last man are antisemites. Strange but true.

It was also a state Fascist movement which lied and stripped the Serbs of their nationality.

Goldstone is much closer to Fascism, state and world dictatorship Fascism than is the BNP.
This is the true Trotskyist analysis..
It is not a dogma. We think for ourselves and try to see reality for what it truly is.

For purposes of discussion let me place on paper the arguments of Richard Landes in fisking Goldstone. It seems to me that Landes raises huge questions and I am not sure that the answers to these questions are contained in his method, that is the method of a progressive bourgeois commentator. Of especial importance are some reference Landes makes to the Hague Kangaroo Court that murdered Milosevic. This is perhaps the key issue about Goldstone. Anyway we will print the Landes fisking first, then later add more material from a revolutionary Trotskyist viewpoint. I think Richard could draw some lessons from Trotsky´s method of fighting in the Civil War.

In the spirit of discussion we shall look closely at what Richard Landes has to say about this Goldman antisemitic report on the Gaza War.

It is of importance that Goldstone is a Jew but remember he is a certain type of Jew, one who has been a cog in the Imperialist war machine for a very long time, a man who was at the centre of the destruction of Yugoslavia and the murder of President Slobodan Milosevic inside the cell of that very Hague Kangaroo Court run by the very same Goldstone.

There was a very big struggle waged on Israpundit by myself and others over many years in which we said that first they came for Yugoslavia and the Serbs, then they will come for the Jews and Israel.

We were opposed on this by Israpundit especially by editor Belman who could never make up his mind, but especially by Narvey, Levinson and above all by that traitor to the Jewish people calling himself “Yamit82” (His true name is Nahum something) who Belman covers for.

Yes it sure looks that in Goldstone the Serb issue has come back to haunt the Jews.

Will the above named on Israpundit make any amends? No they will not. They are opportunists and essentially not principled and truthful people.

It is time now for truth and principle inside the Israeli Jewish movement.

[begin Landes fisking of Goldstone here]

September 17, 2009

Richard Goldstone has an op-ed in the NYT today. It is most striking because it is so transparently misleading. Indeed, it’s just the kind of misinformation that fisking was invented to counter. So I couldn’t help doing so.

Goldstone clearly counts on addressing a sympathetic audience ignorant of the facts — a choir. I address those readers of the news who still want to be part of a “reality-based” community, for whom evidence must be addressed, analyzed, and assessed. You make up your mind if Judge Goldstone is an honest, fair-minded man, or someone who, for whatever mysterious reason, is in thrall to a narrative he must serve, regardless of the evidence.

By RICHARD GOLDSTONE
I ACCEPTED with hesitation my United Nations mandate to investigate alleged violations of the laws of war and international human rights during Israel’s three-week war in Gaza last winter. The issue is deeply charged and politically loaded. I accepted because the mandate of the mission was to look at all parties: Israel; Hamas, which controls Gaza; and other armed Palestinian groups.

This is astonishing. Mary Robinson — the presiding genius of Durban I — rejected it because the mandate was only to investigate Israel, tainted from the beginning. Goldstone requested, in vain, that the mandate be widened. For him to pretend that the mandate was to investigate all groups when it never was, whether he threw in some comments on Hamas or not, assumes a pervasive illiteracy among his audience — the readers of the NYT.

I accepted because my fellow commissioners are professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation.

But above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm.

While this sounds great to the liberal ear, these laws were formulated for conventional warfare. When the war is asymmetrical and the attacker hides among civilans for protection — using human shields — the laws need reinterpreting. It’s precisely this explanatory context of insurgents using human shields as cover for attacks on enemy civilians, that Chinkin dismissed from the beginning, and that the Commission, even though it occasionally considers evidence for it, systematically minimizes.

Here it is worth noting that this failure to recognize the problem has on the one hand been exploited by UN member states and officials of the UNHRC and by NGO officials to attack Israel’s legitimacy. This is worse than naïveté – by masking and excusing this criminal behavior, this approach constitutes a major contribution to the perpetuation of global conflict.

In the fighting in Gaza, all sides flouted that fundamental principle.

While the Goldstone commission’s report was actually far more condemnatory of Israel than this even-handed formulation suggests, it calls into question the depth perception of the person making it. No other country in the world — the US, Great Britain, Germany — included, has spent as much time and developed as high a standard of restraint in carrying out attacks that might harm enemy civilians. Indeed, were the rest of the world accused by the standard in which Israel’s behavior “flouts” fundamental principles, they would all pass in front of Israel for severity or crime. This is recipe for outlawing war, or rather, the right of the advanced countries to defend themselves against asymmetrical warriors.

Many civilians unnecessarily died and even more were seriously hurt. In Israel, three civilians were killed and hundreds wounded by rockets from Gaza fired by Hamas and other groups. Two Palestinian girls also lost their lives when these rockets misfired.

In Gaza, hundreds of civilians died.

This is a mild version of the report, which sides with the Palestinian count of about 1400 killed, of which 900 were civilians. Close examination of this list reveals it to have numerous cases of combatants “miscategorized” civilians. (For another, independent, study of the same data, see here.)

Goldstone’s commission basically took over the figures from the NGOs (who all backed to some extent, the findings of the tendentious PCHR publication). Notes NGO Monitor:

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Goldstone’s report asserts that the “data provided by non-governmental sources with regard to the percentage of civilians among those killed are generally consistent …” (para. 30). There is no such “consistency” — the numbers claimed by these organizations differ by the hundreds. Goldstone also fails to note the major lack of credibility in PCHR’s data, such as characterizing two leading Hamas military figures, Nizar Rayan and Siad Siam, as civilians. And as researchers have shown, the B’Tselem data, while different from PCHR’s, is also unreliable.

Even by the PCHR figures, Israel has a 1:4 ratio of combatants to civilians, at least twice to ten times as good as US standards. And if the extensive research of some defenders of Israel are right, then its more like a 1:1 or better. Compare this with the twenty thousand civilians Ceylonese troops killed to get at a thousand Tamil Tigers, around the same time as Operation Cast Lead, and you get a sense of the disproportion here. Comparatively, even the figures Palestinians, NGOs and Goldstone promote, make Israel’s air campaign the most careful in the history of urban and aerial warfare.

They died from disproportionate attacks on legitimate military targets and from attacks on hospitals and other civilian structures. They died from precision weapons like missiles from aerial drones as well as from heavy artillery. Repeatedly, the Israel Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and civilians, as the laws of war strictly require.

This paragraph summarizes the entire 575 fact-finding report, and constitutes a “cut and paste” job of the work of deeply politicized Human Rights NGOs. (Goldstone was on the board of HRW, which had already weighed in heavily against Israel before he began the Commission. In order to avoid the semblance of a conflict of interest, he resigned from HRW.) In reality, as the report demonstrates, Goldstone does not know how many “civilians” died; they do not have any idea whether the attacks on “legitimate military targets” were “disproportionate”, whether “hospitals and other civilian structures” were used by Hamas, and whether “precision weapons like missiles from aerial drones” were used. (That last comment bears the particular signature of HRW’s Marc Garlasco, who eagerly applies to Israel a standard he never came near meeting in his own military work.)

Israel is correct that identifying combatants in a heavily populated area is difficult, and that Hamas fighters at times mixed and mingled with civilians. But that reality did not lift Israel’s obligation to take all feasible measures to minimize harm to civilians.

It’s all here. How often, and how systematically did Hamas mingle with civilans, even compel civilians to serve as human shield? The Commission minimizes this issue repeatedly, and never considers the possibility that the few shreds of evidence they briefly take up are actually the tip of a massively intimidated iceberg of Palestinian grievance against Hamas that they dare not voice, and that the Commission, eager to judge Israel harshly, showed no interest in detecting.

Yet it is perhaps what is missing which is most telling. Reading the report, one would be unaware of Hamas’s human-shield strategy, a significant contributory factor to the civilian deaths in Gaza. Goldstone prefers to ignore the obvious. Although he states: “Palestinian armed groups were present in urban areas during the military operations and launched rockets from urban areas”, he avoids the logical conclusion of the massive use of human shields. Of course, admitting that Hamas endangered Gazan citizens would provide an alternative to Israeli guilt. Yet, rather than state the inconvenient truth, the report reinforces preconceived Israeli culpability.

This is the main reason of leaving Hamas’ violations out of the mandate: the more you pay attention to their atrocious behavior — maximizing their own civilian casualties — the more Israel gets “off the moral hook.”

Our fact-finding team found that in many cases Israel could have done much more to spare civilians without sacrificing its stated and legitimate military aims.

As the report shows, the term “fact finding” is entirely misleading – the report was composed of NGO claims and carefully chosen “eyewitness” testimony, which has been demonstrated to be inconsistent, at best, as clearly shown in the Abd Rabbo case.

It should have refrained from attacking clearly civilian buildings, and from actions that might have resulted in a military advantage but at the cost of too many civilian lives.

Here the astoundingly unjust measure of what “constitutes a sufficiiently advantageous target to warrant civilian casualties,” can best be seen by a comparison with just one incident. This NATO bombing in Serbia, was adjudicated by the International Court, for which Goldstone was a prosecutor. Hence, presumably, this ruling should offer some kind of precedent (or at least guideline) in this new and highly subjective field of law. NATO forces had bombed a TV station without warning (lest they endanger their pilots), killing 10-17 civilians, and interrupting transmission for a couple of hours. The court ruled:

Assuming the station was a legitimate objective, the civilian casualties were unfortunately high but do not appear to be clearly disproportionate.

Mark Garlasco makes similar remarks in defense of the US, whose record for minimizing civilian casualties, especially under his guidance in the early years of this decade, was far below Israel’s:

“I don’t think people really appreciate the gymnastics that the U.S. military goes through in order to make sure that they’re not killing civilians,” Garlasco points out.

Garlasco ordered over 50 strikes none of which hit their target. Under him US civilian to combatant casualtes in targeted killings were well below 1:10. His maximal acceptable casualty limit was 50. Israel’s is 15, and commanders often call off strikes for even lower figures. As a result, for this decade Istael’s casualty ratio is almost 2:1 (250 targets, 150 collateral casualties).

In these cases, Israel must investigate, and Hamas is obliged to do the same. They must examine what happened and appropriately punish any soldier or commander found to have violated the law.

In addition to the absurd and immoral equivalence between Israel and Hamas, the claim that Israel has a “dismal record” of investigating its own forces is Goldstone’s self-justification. Comparison with other countries in similar situations disproves this claim.

Unfortunately, both Israel and Hamas have dismal records of investigating their own forces. I am unaware of any case where a Hamas fighter was punished for deliberately shooting a rocket into a civilian area in Israel — on the contrary, Hamas leaders repeatedly praise such acts. While Israel has begun investigations into alleged violations by its forces in the Gaza conflict, they are unlikely to be serious and objective.

But both Israel and Hamas have dismal records of investigating and holding accountable members of their own forces for serious laws-of-war violations.

Goldstone conducted an independent investigation? Looks more like plagiarism from HRW, from which Goldstone apparently resigned only formally.

Absent credible local investigations, the international community has a role to play.

The term “international community” is self-serving as invoked by Goldstone – the UN human rights mechanism, including the UNHRC, as well as institutions like the ICC, are politicized, biased, and are responsible, along with the NGOs which they are closely linked, for the destruction of the values of human rights. Note that the Commission’s mandate was established by the a body presided over by Cuba and containing such stalwart human rights defenders as:

If justice for civilian victims cannot be obtained through local authorities, then foreign governments must act. There are various mechanisms through which to pursue international justice. The International Criminal Court and the exercise of universal jurisdiction by other countries against violators of the Geneva Conventions are among them. But they all share one overarching aim: to hold accountable those who violate the laws of war. They are built on the premise that abusive fighters and their commanders can face justice, even if their government or ruling authority is not willing to take that step.

Pursuing justice in this case is essential because no state or armed group should be above the law. Western governments in particular face a challenge because they have pushed for accountability in places like Darfur, but now must do the same with Israel, an ally and a democratic state.

Goldstone selects Israel as the scapegoat for “Western governments” to justify the ICC case on Sudan and respond to charges that this case is “racist” or anti-Arab.

Failing to pursue justice for serious violations during the fighting will have a deeply corrosive effect on international justice, and reveal an unacceptable hypocrisy. As a service to the hundreds of civilians who needlessly died and for the equal application of international justice, the perpetrators of serious violations must be held to account.

The Council has adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than all the other 191 UN member states combined…. The more time the Council spends demonizing Israel, the less likely it becomes that it will ever get around to condemning genocide in Sudan, female slavery in Saudi Arabia, or torture in Egypt.”

Hypocrisy is rampant in Goldstone’s report, including this final remark. If the commission wanted to go after a Western “ally” just for the sake of even-handedness — itself a dubious way to proceed — then surely the USA, with, at least according to claims by respectable organizations of having killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis deserves more scrutiny than tiny, beleaguered Israel, with — at most — its hundreds of casualties.

Richard Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor for war-crime tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, is the head of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.

Richard Goldstone, what happened to you? I’m reading your book. You have investigated really awful cases of mass slaughter. How could you lose your sense of proportions, your moral compass, and join this mad chorus of accusers? What “gift” has corrupted your sight?

Richard Landes has just made an analysis of the Goldstone Report phenomenon and in his introduction he states “I address those readers of the news who still want to be part of a “reality-based” community, for whom evidence must be addressed, analyzed, and assessed”.

At the moment there are everywhere all kinds of conspiracy nuts and spirit (ghosts) hacks doing the rounds. There are those who are suggesting that iran is a peaceful nation really. That if Iran gets the bomb so what, it will do nothing with it!

Yes Landes has it right. The key issue of today is the understanding of the real, law based world in which we live.

I come to this key issue from the standpoint of being a dialectical materialist and opposed to all forms of idealist and religious methods of thinking.

Landes probably comes from a different standpoint. I think he represents the best in bourgeois thinking and bourgeois science, there is certainly such a thing.

In that context we on 4international offer a hand in unity to people like Richard Landes.

We will be looking at his writings on the Goldstone Report. The following article was placed on our historical site today, along with some references tot he Fatah Constitution and the Hamas Charter. That site is called www.Jewishhistory.wordpress.com

The Goldstone Report

By Felix Quigley

October 17, 2009

The Goldstone Report should be read alongside the Hamas and Fatah Constitutions, the statements by the Iranian Mullahs as well as by Ahmadinejad.

But also alongside the speech made by Obama when a few months ago he travelled to Cairo to address “the Muslim world”. In his speech Obama made a direct comparision and drew equality between the Palestine Refugees of 1948 and the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis.

Thus it should also be read alongside the numerous statements made by George Bush Jnr in which he defined the answer as being the creation of an Arab “Palestinian”, that is in all truth Jihadist, state on the flank of Israel.

And it should also be read alongside the position of Reagan towards the Holocaust.

In reading the Goldstone Report people should also be aware of the role of Britain and the US Governments towards the Holocaust of the Jews, where they forced the Jews to remain in bloodbath Europe, note here the British White Paper of 1939 which basically set up the Nazi Holocaust and also the position of Roosevelt (clearly an antisemite) towards the Jews.

At another level Goldstone is a continuation of the Big Lie technique used over 2000 years against the Jews.

Major parts of this lie in recent years, that is in our living memory are

* And hiding that Arafat, Abbas and Hamas are direct continuation of the policies of Hajj Amin el Husseini

* Hiding the central hate-filled content of the Koran, not at all a religious document but the basis for modern Fascism

* Finally Goldstone must be understood against the background of other major lies, lies against the Jews

They are

Dir Yassin

The Qana “Massacre”

The Muhammed El Durra hoax affair

Perhaps of all of these the Goldstone Report is the worst of all. This relates to the modern drive for world dictatorship, to the rule of the US and EU extremists in Government who seek to control the world.

The essence of the Goldman Report on the Israeli fight against Hamas is this:

How can any country defend itself against attack from without? Does any country have the right to defend itself from attack from without?

Poised against Israel are the countries of the Arab League, the countries of the Islamic world, who have a controlling power over the United Nations.

Poised also against Israel is the power of the US Government and the whole of the EU Bureaucracy who wish to break down all national resistance to their overall world dictatorship.

If Israel as an example of a nation state is not able to defend itself against attack on its very existence (see above where we refer to Iranian, Hamas and Fatah aims) then Israel can no longer exist as a sovereign nation state.

And although they do not see it no nation, such as Russia, China or India, can exist either as a sovereign nation state.

The issues behind the Goldstone Report are these

1. Israel was bombarded with Hamas and other rockets for 8 years

2. Hamas fought from inside civilians and fought without wearing military clothing

Yet despite those two items Israel was asked by Goldstone to fight “humanely” against hamas.

To fight “humanely” against such an enemy, against enemy in war, is to ask the impossible and to not fight at all.

So the Goldstone Report is a continuation of the Dir Yassin Lie, Qana and El Durra. It is to create a lying scenario in order to stop Israelñ from defending itself.

The issue touches the future of every country and its right to sovereigny.

It is in a different form but is the same issue…The Irish reject the EU…The rules are rewritten and the Irish are made to vote until they accept the EU.

We on 4international say that there must be unity in action against these moves towards world dictatorship, and especially in defence of the rights of Israel to defend its sovereign right to use ANY means to defend itself.

Such unity in action does not mean that we will drop our revolutionary socialist programme. Far from it, in action we will show that only Trotskyism can lead the Israeli and other peoples, and working class, to victory.

Even as I write this the hopeless opportunist Ted Belman of Israpundit is continuing to cultivate his friendship with Sarah Palin and with reactionary republican circles, thus showing that Belman is now and always will be a crass American Imperialist stooge.

Belman hates socialism, hates Trotskyism.

Even so we on 4international propose unity in action against the Goldstone Report with even Belman. Will Belman offer the same to 4international. I doubt it personally and if he does not he will again be showing his true Imperialist and Reactionary colours.

It is becoming clear that not only has one to understand Tom Paine but one also has to deal with those who write about him but use him for their own reactionary purposes. This is only a beginning stab at this. Paine has been claimed by just a few too many people for his own good.

This is an extract from a red pepper publication

[Begin Red Pepper extract here]

Tom Paine, restless democrat

This June marks the bicentenary of the death of a man who was buried in obscurity but whose ideas are today claimed by everyone from anarchists to neoliberals. Mike Marqusee celebrates the life, work and ideas of the great revolutionary who declared that ‘my country is the world and my religion is to do good’

‘This interment was a scene to affect and to wound any sensible heart. Contemplating who it was, what man it was, that we were committing to an obscure grave on an open and disregarded bit of land, I could not help but feel most acutely.’

The occasion for this lament was the sparsely attended funeral of Thomas Paine, who died 200 years ago, in June 1809, at the age of 72, and was buried in the small farm he owned in what was then the rural hamlet of New Rochelle, 20 miles north of New York City.

Not long before, New Rochelle’s bigwigs had barred Paine from voting, claiming he was not a US citizen. Paine, who had virtually invented the idea of US citizenship, was furious. But this was not the end of his indignities. When he sought a place to be buried, even the Quakers would not oblige him. Hence the muted funeral of the man who had inspired and guided revolutions in north America and France, and equally important, the revolution that did not happen in Britain.

The following is a further extract from this article (details below)

It is interesting in that it throws into the Mix the talkative but reactionary Christopher Hitchens who supported the Imperialist War against Yugoslavia and whjo is also an enemy of Israel.

And it contains a useful paragraph which refers to the fact that while Payne was a deist this was a very revolutionary concept for his period

When Paine returned to the US in 1802, he received a cool welcome. He was now the infamous author of The Age of Reason, an infidel with whom even old allies like his friend in the White House, Thomas Jefferson, were reluctant to associate. Meddlesome Christians urged the sick and dying man to embrace their faith, but were brusquely dismissed. One of his friends facetiously suggested that Paine could resolve his financial worries by publishing a ‘recantation’. The author of The Age of Reason replied, ‘Tom Paine never told a lie’.

In the two centuries since his obscure burial, Paine has been claimed by as many as once disclaimed him. Liberals, Marxists, anarchists, right wing libertarians, American exceptionalists, neoliberals (a passage in Rights of Man reads like a hymn to globalisation). Even New Rochelle finally got around to awarding Paine posthumous citizenship – in 1945.

Recently ‘New Atheists’ such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have staked a claim. Dawkins simply omits the fact that Paine was not an atheist but a deist. Hitchens takes a different route, dismissing Paine’s deism as a halfway house to atheism. What both miss is that Paine’s deism was part and parcel of a sustained challenge to the hierarchies and powers of his day – which cannot be said of their atheism.

was the first to propose, with his publication of Common Sense, actual American Independence from a system of Aristocratic Royalty –
by suggesting a Democratic Republic for the “United States of America,” a name attributed to him –

with a Unicameral Congress, as adopted by Pennsylvania. He inspired the Declaration of Independence.

He proposed the Abolition

of Negro Slavery; proposed

Arbitration for

International Peace;

advocated Justice for Women; pointed out the Reality of Human Brotherhood; suggested International Copyright; invented a suspension bridge and smokeless candle; proposed the Education of Children of the Poor at public expense; suggested a Great Republic of All Nations of the world. He urged the Purchase of the great Louisiana Territory. He proposed pension payments or Old Age Pensions. He also suggested protection for dumb animals. We have honored him when we have adopted these sane propositions.

Tom Paine had a gripping style of writing with daring ideas and daring words. He served as inspirer of soldiers in retreat. He was a soldier from Pennsylvania at Perth Amboy, NJ and, subsequently, served with General Greene near Fort LEE, NJ. Paine saw the defeat of the Americans at Fort Washington, NY on “Washington Heights” across the Hudson River from Fort Lee. He marched through New Jersey, where he began his inspiring writings, CRISIS ..., which George Washington had read before his troops.

Tom Paine had been a friend of Thomas Jefferson –
and of “BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, the only signer of four major documents: Declaration of Independence; Treaty of Alliance with France; Treaty of Paris to end the war; and the Constitution“.

Tom Paine strove to spread the idea of a Republic with Wide Suffrage – in America, England and France, and he even went to a dungeon-jail in France and narrowly missed execution for many of “his” – now “our” courageous beliefs.

He died in 1809 in Greenwich Village, NY on Grand Street in relative poverty.
His bones had been buried near his home in New Rochelle, NY, but ten years later,
the bones were brought to England for a monument to him – which was refused.
His marked bones are here-and-there . . . thankfully,
a search and expensive DNA studies of his relics are slowly being pursued to honor him again.

love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to “bind me in all cases whatsoever” to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other.

Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.

I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow, and the slain of America.

There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both.

Howe’s first object is, partly by threats and partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people to deliver up their arms and receive mercy. The ministry recommended the same plan to Gage, and this is what the tories call making their peace, “a peace which passeth all understanding” indeed! A peace which would be the immediate forerunner of a worse ruin than any we have yet thought of.

Ye men of Pennsylvania, do reason upon these things! Were the back counties to give up their arms, they would fall an easy prey to the Indians, who are all armed: this perhaps is what some Tories would not be sorry for. Were the home counties to deliver up their arms, they would be exposed to the resentment of the back counties who would then have it in their power to chastise their defection at pleasure. And were any one state to give up its arms, that state must be garrisoned by all Howe’s army of Britons and Hessians to preserve it from the anger of the rest.

Mutual fear is the principal link in the chain of mutual love, and woe be to that state that breaks the compact. Howe is mercifully inviting you to barbarous destruction, and men must be either rogues or fools that will not see it. I dwell not upon the vapors of imagination; I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as A, B, C, hold up truth to your eyes.

I thank God, that I fear not. I see no real cause for fear. I know our situation well, and can see the way out of it. While our army was collected, Howe dared not risk a battle; and it is no credit to him that he decamped from the White Plains, and waited a mean opportunity to ravage the defenseless Jerseys; but it is great credit to us, that, with a handful of men, we sustained an orderly retreat for near an hundred miles, brought off our ammunition, all our field pieces, the greatest part of our stores, and had four rivers to pass. None can say that our retreat was precipitate, for we were near three weeks in performing it, that the country might have time to come in. Twice we marched back to meet the enemy, and remained out till dark. The sign of fear was not seen in our camp, and had not some of the cowardly and disaffected inhabitants spread false alarms through the country, the Jerseys had never been ravaged.

Once more we are again collected and collecting; our new army at both ends of the continent is recruiting fast, and we shall be able to open the next campaign with sixty thousand men, well armed and clothed. This is our situation, and who will may know it.

By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue; by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety of evils- a ravaged country- a depopulated city- habitations without safety, and slavery without hope- our homes turned into barracks and bawdy-houses for Hessians, and a future race to provide for, whose fathers we shall doubt of. Look on this picture and weep over it! and if there yet remains one thoughtless wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented.

This is a really strange piece which was in the form of a radio address made by a Joseph Lewis half a century ago. Lewis was part of a group supporting the memory of Paine.

It is valuable in parts but I notice that Lewis was covering for the system, and he omits to mention that Paine was disgusted by the failure of the American leaders to come to his aid in the French jail, also he omits or does not know that although Lincoln was a big fan of Paine, he met much opposition on that score from I think the equivalent of the State Department, ruling circles anyhow.

I am going to make the most remarkable offer ever made over the radio. This offer is Free. Absolutely Free. No obligations of any kind. It concerns one of the greatest books ever written. A Book that has done more for the emancipation of the human mind from ignorance, and superstition than any other volume in existence. It has been responsible for the education of some of our greatest men. The title of the book is, “The Age of Reason” by Thomas Paine. Do you know who Thomas Paine was? He was born in Thetford, England in 1737. When he was 35 years old he met Benjamin Franklin in a coffee house, in London. Benjamin Franklin sensed something unusual in this “ingenious worthy young man” and gave him a letter of introduction and urged him to go to America. He did.

The wisdom of Benjamin Franklin was never better exemplified than when he recognized the rare ability of Thomas Paine. How fortunate was that meeting.

Thomas Paine landed upon our shores penniless, and like many immigrants he enriched our country. Not only that, but he also made one of the most valuable contributions in behalf of Freedom in the history of mankind.

Shortly after his arrival here he became editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, and could not help but feel the tyranny under which the people were living. He saw an opportunity that never existed before. He saw an opportunity to establish a new government and wrote the pamphlet “Common Sense.” It electrified the people as no other writing before or since! That pamphlet, “Common Sense” caused the Declaration of Independence to be proclaimed, provoked the Revolutionary Was and was responsible for the establishment of the United States of America.

No wonder Benjamin Franklin took pride in being responsible for Thomas Paine’s contribution to the cause of America’s Independence. He said, “I value myself on the share I had in procuring for America the acquisition of so useful and valuable a citizen.”

In fact, when I made a study of Thomas Paine’s association with the American Revolution, and reread his Common Sense, I was forcibly impressed with the similarity of the writings of this pamphlet and the language of The Declaration of Independence.

I worked for years in further research, and became convinced that Thomas Paine wrote the ORIGINAL draft of that immortal document. I wrote a book to prove my premise, and I am happy to say that this book is now used in the classrooms of many colleges in the United Sates and Europe.

But when the war started and defeat after defeat had been suffered by the Continental Army, it became a grave question as to whether we would be successful in the conflict. This concern was expressed time and again by the Commander-In-Chief of the Army. On more than one occasion, General Washington sent up moans of despair, which culminated in his final gasp of desperation, when he cried, “I think the game pretty well up!”

And now there has just come to public light an hitherto unknown letter which makes us realize the desperation of Washington’s plight. This letter was written to George Mason, one of the leaders of the Revolution. Washington wrote: “We are without money … without provisions … the history of this war is a history of false hopes … our efforts are in vain.”

If the Commander-In-Chief of the Army thought our struggle for Independence was a “false hope,” and that our efforts to achieve Freedom “are in vain,” what must have been the temper of the people in such a hopeless situation. They too had become discouraged, enthusiasm began to wane, many deserted the great Cause, and mutiny had already taken place in the Army.

It was during this time, in the very depths of despair, that General Von Stueben said that pamphlet written by Thomas Paine “would produce a better effect than all the recommendations of Congress, in prose and verse.”

He was right. It did. It began with these immortal words: “These are the times that try men’s souls … ” Paine called it, THE CRISIS. Washington had it read to his soldiers, and I need not tell you what effect it produced. It was on the lips of all the people, and a revolution in sentiment and determination came over the American colonies. They were once more determined that the war for Independence must be won. Whenever the situation became desperate, whenever another defeat was suffered, these words of Paine reverberated throughout the camps:

“These are the times that try men’s souls … He that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

Whenever there was a shortage of food, whenever there was insufficient clothing, whenever there were mumblings of discontent, these words suddenly became audible:

“These are the times that try men’s souls … Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.”

Whenever plagued by anxious thoughts of home and farm, the soldier heard these words.:

“These are the times that try men’s souls … The harder the struggle the more glorious the triumph.”

Whenever in moments of loneliness, thinking of wife and child, wondering whether his patriotic devotion to enlist in the Cause was too high a price to pay, he was answered by the gem:

“These are the times that try men’s souls … ” What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: It is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

When fighting seemed never to cease, these words rang out, drowning all despairing thoughts:

“These are the times that try men’s souls … Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”

Paine’s inspiring words had been mixed with the blood of Washington’s soldiers and never before had such a combination flowed through the arteries of man.

In these Crisis papers, thirteen in all, are to be found not only messages of inspiration, comforting and reassuring words, but sound military advice, valuable suggestions of administration, and equally as important precious knowledge that was so essential for the proper guidance of the people during so serious a time. They also cemented the diverse forces when the country was so dangerously divided.

While words can cheer, while words can inspire, while words can dry eyes wet with sorrow and soothe the heart gripped with fear, words cannot feed you, they cannot clothe you, they cannot protect you from the chills of night, the winter’s blast, the cold of snow, nor can they stay the pangs of hunger. While words can fortify the mind and make the timid courageous, something more practical is needed to meet the realities of life. More than words are needed to plant the food, fell the forests, turn the wheels of machinery, provide transportation for an Army, sustain the soldiers in battle, and achieve victory in the struggle.

Many a genius has been lost because he needed first the wherewithal to feed and clothe his body.

Many a cause has failed because of the lack of the means of achieving it. Thomas Paine combined inspiration with action and deeds. And so at the crucial moment when the Army was without food and clothing and ammunition, Thomas Paine went to France to secure those things which we lacked, and which were so essential to hold our Army together.

His plea to the French Government resulted in a shipload of ammunition, clothing and money.

Such help in such a crisis is beyond the measure of words to tell. Only let it be known that it was Thomas Paine’s efforts which accomplished these results!

No wonder John Adams said, that “History will ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine.”

Through seven long years of this struggle Paine continued his labors, both as a soldier and author until the publication of the thirteenth and last crisis, beginning with these cherished words:

“The times that tried men’s souls are over, and the greatest and completest revolution the world has ever known, gloriously and happily accomplished.”

I have no hesitation in stating emphatically, that if there had been NO Thomas Paine, there would have been no United States of America.

Recently, a prominent citizen of Miami, and a well known writer, Mr. Tom Thursday, referred to Thomas Paine as “Mr. U.S.A.”

In my opinion, this is the most appropriate name ever applied to this great patriot.

When the war was over, Benjamin Franklin said to Paine:

“Where liberty is, that is my country,” and Paine replied, “Where liberty is not, that is mine.”

And so Thomas Paine left these shores for Europe to help establish Republics in England and in France.

When Thomas Paine arrived on French soil he was hailed as the “Symbol of Freedom.”

So great was his fame, that he was elected by four “departments,” that is, four separate constituents, to represent them in the new National Assembly.

Paine wrote the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, a manifesto similar to our own Declaration of Independence.

He also wrote the new Constitution of France, and if the French Deputies had heeded his advice, there would have been no “Reign of Terror.”

Paine wanted the French people to adopt a Constitution as their first order of business, while Robespierre and Murat, and other fanatical leaders of the Revolution, demanded, as the first act of the new government, the death of Louis the sixteenth.

Thomas Paine, with, I believe, some knowledge that it might mean his death, stood up in the National Assembly and made an eloquent plea for the life of the French ruler in the face of a fanaticism that demanded the King’s death. The enraged Assembly, upon the slightest provocation, was ready to tear limb from limb any who dared to interfere with their mad determination, to make the King pay the supreme penalty, because of the accident of birth. Nevertheless, Thomas Paine stood firm and said, “I would rather record a thousand errors, dictated by humanity, than one of severe justice”; and at the conclusion of his impassioned plea, he cried, “Kill the King; but not the man.”

By this act, Thomas Paine not only proved his love for mankind, but gave the world an example of unparalleled courage.

Thomas Paine stood before that hostile convention and pleaded for the life of a man for whom he had no personal regard, and for no other purpose whatever, except to save a life — to prevent an injustice, and to heal the scars of battle with the salve of mercy.

The Bible says what greater act can a man do than lay down his life for his friend. Thomas Paine performed even a greater deed — he faced the ire and fanaticism of blood thirsty tyrants, not to fight for the life of a friend, on the contrary, he fought for one whom he detested and whose office he abhorred.

To Thomas Paine, justice and humanity were above personal safety.

When you consider the circumstances, when you consider Paine’s detestation for monarchy, when you consider Paine’s hatred of tyranny, then it is the inevitable conclusion that this was one of the grandest acts of moral courage ever performed by a single individual. Thomas Paine was ready to die that the principles of just might prevail.

This heroic act of Thomas Paine shall be remembered forever as unequaled in the annals of man’s struggle for Freedom and Justice.

For this sublime deed Thomas Paine was arrested, thrown into prison, and condemned to be guillotined.

Before being taken to the Luxembourg Prison, Paine gave Joel Barlow the manuscript of his book “The Age of Reason,” with the request that if anything should happen go him, Barlow should see to it that the book was published.

On the very first page of the book, Paine wrote: “It has been my intention, for several years, to publish my thoughts upon religion. I am well aware of the difficulties that attend the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a more advanced period of my life … and at a time when the purity of my motives could not admit of a question … ”

However, the book had not been completed, and from all appearances, only the First Part, would ever see the light of publication.

While Paine was in prison, orders had been issued, to mark, with a white cross, the door of the cell of each prisoner, who was to be taken out at daybreak, to be guillotined!

That night, Paine’s cell was extremely hot, and he opened the door to get some air.

Now it happened, that the doors of the prison cells, were so constructed that, when open, or closed, they looked alike.

During the night, when the guards came to mark the doors of the doomed men, they made a white cross on the door of Paine’s cell, while it was open!

Just before daybreak, his cell having cooled off, Paine closed the door. Thus, the white cross was on the inside, which left the outside of his cell door, unmarked!!!

At daybreak, when the guards came to take the prisoners to be guillotined, there being no white cross on the outside of the door of Paine’s cell, they passed him by!!!

Because of this strange coincidence, THOMAS PAINE ESCAPED BEING GUILLOTINED!!! Without the slightest knowledge of what was taking place, Thomas Paine was saved from death!!!

Through the connivance of the detestable Gouverneur Morris, our then Ambassador to France, Paine remained in the Luxembourg Prison for over nine tortuous months.

However, WHILE IN PRISON HE WROTE THE SECOND PART OF THE AGE OF REASON.

Fortunately, for the world, Gouverneur Morris was recalled as our Ambassador from France and was replaced by the distinguished James Monroe.

When James Monroe arrived in Paris, he wrote to Paine while still in prison this letter.

“The crime of ingratitude has not yet stained, and I trust never will stain, our national character. You are considered by them as not only having rendered important service in our own revolution, but as being, on a more extended scale, the friend of human rights, and able advocate of public liberty. To the welfare of Thomas Paine, the Americas are not, nor can they be, indifferent …

To liberate you will be the object of my endeavors, as soon as possible.”

After much effort, Ambassador Monroe secured the release of Paine. He took him to his home, and he, and Mrs. Monroe, nursed Paine back to health.

Now it is this world famous book, The Age of Reason, which Thomas Paine finished while in prison, that we want to send to you absolutely free.

But another word concerning Thomas Paine before giving you the details.

Thomas Paine wanted to abolish slavery at the same time that American Independence was won, but the pressure from slave owners was too great to overcome, and so it was left to another man to finish the job. Early in life Abraham Lincoln was inspired by Paine’s writings, particularly his essay advocating the abolition of Negro slavery. Lincoln said, “I never tire of reading Paine.” As a result of Paine’s influence, Abraham Lincoln became the Great Emancipator and saved the Union.

And in view of the statement which I am about to read I think I can rightfully ask — what was the secret of Thomas A. Edison’s greatness? He tells it in his own words. In a letter to me shortly before his death, he wrote:

“I have always regarded Thomas Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic … It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine’s works in my boyhood … it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker’s views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me then about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember very vividly the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine’s writings, and I recall thinking at that time, “What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!” My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.”

These are Mr. Edison’s own words acknowledging his indebtedness to Thomas Paine.

What Thomas Paine did for Abraham Lincoln and Thomas A. Edison, he can do for you!

Through the generosity of a friend who attributes his success in life to the reading of Paine’s works, and who has made a very substantial contribution to The Thomas Paine Foundation, we will send you, absolutely free, as part of an educational campaign, a copy of the complete and unexpurgated edition of this remarkable book “The Age of Reason,” containing 190 pages, beautifully printed and finely bound. It is yours to keep. You will read it and treasure it as have hundreds of thousands of others. In it you too will find inspiration and courage, and who knows, you too may be inspired by its great logic to become another Lincoln or another Edison.

In sending for your copy, we would appreciate your enclosing 10 cents to cover the cost of mailing and handling. This is all you have to do to get your FREE copy of “The Age of Reason.” Address The Thomas Paine Foundation, 370 West 35th street, New York, 1, New York, and simply enclose 10 cents to cover the cost of mailing and handling.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity — as this offer may never be made again!